In February 2006, Danny Iny published Ordinary Miracles - Harness the power of writing and get your point across!, a book about communicating effectively in writing. It's informative and fun to read, with a five star (
) rating on Amazon.com and elsewhere.
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Table of Contents and Sample Chapters
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CMP - THE INVERSE TRIAD
Mechanics - why they matter and when they don't
Presentation
Content, Organization, Language - a better model
I remember one of the pivotal moments that prompted me to write this book. I was helping my eleven year old cousin do some homework, in this case a composition about a community service project that her sixth grade class was involved in. The teacher's red corrective markings indicated that there was no name, no date and it was written in pencil when it should have been written in pen. On the bottom was a note titled 'CMP', which indicated that the 'P' part of the grade was lacking, and thus the composition had to be redone.
I asked my cousin what CMP stood for, and after a moment's thought she hazarded a guess: "Computation, Mechanics and Presentation?" I asked her if maybe the 'C' stood for 'Content' and she agreed that it would make more sense.
It didn't bother me right away that Content, Mechanics and Presentation were not a very good way to break down the different facets of a piece of writing (I'll address that at the end of this chapter). Rather, what immediately bothered me was the lopsided weight given to these various aspects. Presentation was the focus of the majority of the teacher's notes, and poor Presentation (i.e. name, date, writing in pen, neat handwriting, etc.) was grounds for redoing the paper. Mechanics (i.e. spelling and grammar) got a couple of notes in the form of corrected spelling. Content was not addressed at all.
The weight given to these three benchmark categories is exactly the opposite of what it should be. Content, which was not at all addressed by the teacher, is the most important part of any piece of writing. If the content isn't good, even the highest level of grammatical perfection will not save you. If the piece is riddled with errors in spelling and grammar, it makes little difference if the work is neat, tidy or 'pretty'.
Unlike Mechanics or Presentation, which only need to be addressed in brief to clear up some misconceptions, Content is important enough to warrant the entire next chapter. For a moment we'll skip over it to cover the other elements of this flawed grading scale.
Before diving in, I want to be clear that in discussing the writing practices of children, I'm not lamenting the syntactically and semantically fragmented compositions that they inevitably churn out. That sort of work appropriately represents the phases of a child's linguistic development, and these linguistic limitations can and will be outgrown. Rather, I'm complaining about the way in which children are indoctrinated with a very inaccurate perception of writing. Unlike linguistic limitations, these misconceptions are not as easily outgrown. These misconceptions, which must be remedied, cannot be corrected without understanding their limiting and confining nature.
Mechanics - why they matter and when they don't
When people talk about the mechanics of writing, they mean grammar and spelling. The misunderstanding of the importance and purpose of these things hinges on the confusion of writing as an exercise in the English language, meant to impress a teacher, with writing as communication.
Teachers are good at reciting the reasons why mechanics are important: their lack expresses sloppiness, not having proofread sufficiently, etc. But these reasons address the impression that the reader gets of you the writer, not of your work. Writing is communication, and understanding the importance of mechanics requires an understanding of the part that they play as the foundations of this communicative medium.
Imagine you're reading a really engaging novel. The story is fascinating, the characters are real and three-dimensional, the descriptions make you feel like you're actually there. You're getting to a really suspenseful point, a real cliffhanger. It's like watching a movie, and you're on the edge of your seat. The whole theater is holding it's breath. Then a cellphone rings right behind you, and the spell is broken. You're forcibly reminded that it's not real, you're just sitting in a movie theater and watching some pictures projected on the wall. You become consciously aware of the people sitting next to you and the popcorn on your lap.
The literary equivalent of that annoying cellphone is a spelling mistake, or a poorly phrased sentence. Your brain, which was a moment ago just soaking in the words and translating them into a story, is interrupted. The train of thought hiccups and you're wondering 'what?' – in the split second that it takes the reader to realize that when you wrote 'exiting' you really meant 'exciting', the spell is broken.
Most teachers would overlook the occasional typo – it would be petty of them to hold it against you. But that occasional typo destroys the persuasive and engaging piece that you've spent hours crafting. The writing is essentially the same, but it no longer echoes in the reader's mind – it's like listening to a persuasive and inspiring sermon, only to have the microphone cut out for a few seconds. The spell is broken.
The rule is always proven by the exception to it, and as an illustration I'll call on Flowers for Algernon
The story is about a man named Charlie, who suffers from mental retardation. He undergoes an experimental treatment to increase his intelligence. The book is written from the point of view of Charlie's journal. The mechanics (spelling and grammar) of the book make very tangible for the reader the degree of mental change. This exactly proves the rule, because in this case the mechanics are poor on purpose, as a method of communication. The mechanical 'errors' are supposed to make you stop for a moment and ask yourself 'what?', they're supposed to remind you that you're not reading just any old thing. A mechanical inconsistency in the middle of the book, when Charlie is at the pinnacle of his mental abilities, would shatter the effect. But the book is wonderfully and carefully crafted, and there are no such inconsistencies.
A final note on the subject of mechanics is that the only way to improve them is to read. Not to read grammar books and style guides, just to read. By reading a lot, you expose yourself to correct usage of words and phrases. You will eventually get used to them, reaching the point where incorrect usage or grammar just looks, sounds and feels wrong. Anyone fluent in written English will be able to tell you if a sentence sounds wrong, and will be able to suggest ways to make it sound right. Only a high-school English teacher will be able to tell you which rule you violated. To a writer, the former knowledge and understanding is much more important than the latter.
Presentation isn't just about the color of the paper or the size of the font, it's about the way your ideas are presented to the reader. Perhaps 'delivery' is a better word. This part of putting together a piece of written work is almost never given the respect that it really warrants. In grade school Presentation is everything, elevating it far beyond what it deserves. But as writers get older they come to ignore it completely, as though it doesn't matter at all. It does.
Font selection, font size, use of white space (and by extension paragraph length), and even language of delivery are all a part of Presentation, and they're all important in their own right.
Font selection is a purely cosmetic element of the writing process, but that does not make it completely unimportant. Your font should be large enough for your audience to read clearly, and using a nonstandard font can sometimes add a great deal to your piece. This should never be done arbitrarily, though; if you don't have a reason to use a different font, then of course you shouldn't. I feel I should also caution you against nonstandard fonts that are too hard to read, no matter how appropriate they may be – if the reader has to struggle to make out what you're trying to say, any mood that you're trying to create will be broken.
A consideration regarding font selection is the medium of publication. Specifically, do you expect your work to be read off of a piece of paper, or a computer screen? This is important because fonts are broadly divided into two types: serif and sans-serif. A serif is the little bulge or curlicue at the edge of a letter (Times New Roman is a good example of a serif font). 'Sans' means 'without' in French, and therefore sans-serif fonts are the ones that don't have the extra bulge or curlicue (for example Arial). The difference matters because our eyes use the extra bits of the serif font to find the borders of the letters, and we read them quite a bit faster. That's only true of text printed on paper, though. On a computer screen the same font represents more information than our eyes like to handle, so we'll read sans-serif fonts quite a bit faster off a computer screen (that's why most books are printed in Times New Roman, but most websites are rendered in Arial). I can't for the life of me remember where
I first read about this phenomenon, but it's true, and it's borne out by my own experience.
Another issue to consider is the lengths of paragraphs. Readers tend to break a text into discrete sections, and a paragraph break is the writer's way of guiding this natural inclination. Paragraphs that go on for pages tend to intimidate the reader, who likes to know that if the doorbell or phone were to ring all of a sudden, they would only have to reread a few lines to get the gist of the paragraph (as opposed to having to reread pages at a time, which can frustrate a reader to no end). That said, of course, a paragraph will be as long as the content requires. If it's long you shouldn't artificially break it in two, instead you should see if you could simplify and clarify the idea.
Regarding the method of delineation in presenting a paragraph, I prefer visible paragraph breaks (leaving half a line of white space between paragraphs) to indentation (this style is found mostly in articles that are published online). Again, this helps the reader visibly break the text into non-intimidating sections.
Now we're on to language of delivery, which reminds me of a speech that I wrote as part of my sixth grade graduation project. I attended a private Jewish day school in Montreal, which means that even though the language that most of us spoke at home was English, we also had to learn French (because Montreal is in Quebec, the province where French is the national language) and Hebrew (as part of our cultural education). As an extension of this trilingual trend, our speeches had to be written in all three languages. Not three separate versions of the same speech, mind you, but one speech, whose sections would be in different languages. In hindsight, this is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Most of the audience (family and friends) was bilingual, but there were very few that were genuinely trilingual. So not only did we have to overcome the fact that most adults simply aren't interested in the content of a speech written by their child's classmate (especially having already sat through a dozen of them), we also had to get past a very real language barrier. In effect, this policy slashed almost any chance that we had of reaching our audience.
As students in the sixth grade, we didn't have much choice but to follow the instructions of our teachers (not that we appreciated at the time what a colossally stupid idea it really was). Writers, however, generally do have control over the language in which they choose to write, but choose to sprinkle in phrases in any number of foreign languages anyway. This is a terrible thing to do, and my saying so does not stem from any sort of linguistic snobbery. If you're writing something in English, the only language that you can take for granted that your readers will be able to read is English. Every line that you include in a foreign language (without a translation) further detaches your reader from the subject matter. This is not to say that your work must be strictly in English. If you want to add an exotic feel to your work and at the same time show off your knowledge of foreign languages, go right ahead. Just be sure to denote the line as separate from the rest of your text (by italicizing it, for example), and include a translation!
It's worth mentioning that unless you're self-publishing, you're unlikely to have very much control over the visual feel of your work (stuff like layout and font selection tend to be more the purview of the publisher than the author). You do have some control, of course; you set the length of your paragraphs and of course the language of delivery, and publishers may listen to your input regarding layout.
Content, Organization, Language - a better model
I realize that the CMP model is not used in many serious contexts; to the best of my knowledge it is mostly confined to grade school. More serious writing (academic and otherwise) is judged on a COL scale, standing for Content, Organization and Language – a scale that better matches the structure of actual writing (the elements of which will be explored in the next several chapters).
This last chapter is important, though, because just as good writing hinges on an understanding of what writing is, it also relies on knowledge of what writing isn't. These skewed perceptions of how the different strata of composition stand on and are supported by each other are learned early, and the unlearning process can unfortunately be both difficult and slow (the longer we hold preconceptions, the harder it tends to be for us to let go of them).
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